Beyond Gandalf and Magneto, the 86-year-old stage and screen star has a grand career as a great Shakespearean, not to mention his work as an LGBTQ+ rights campaigner. He’ll be here to discuss it all
We could wang on about how great Sir Ian McKellen is all day. Millions know him as Gandalf in the Lord of The Rings and Hobbit trilogieswhile others know him as Magneto in the X-Men franchise, for which he’s revealed he wore a sculpted undersuit to give him a more muscular torso. He returns in Avengers: Doomsday later this year.
But don’t be fooled by the blockbusters; McKellen has been and still is one of the finest actors of his generation. On film, his roles go back to A Touch of Love in the late 1960s, playing John Profumo in Scandal in 1989, and starring in and producing Richard III in the mid-90s. A late90s double whammy – Gods and Monsters, for which he was Oscar nominated, and Apt Pupil – put him over the top, after which he rolled into the aforementioned franchises, resulting in 11 appearances (so far). In between he’s managed some great stuff, such as the ageing ’tec drama Mr Holmes, theatrical thriller The Critic …. and the voice of Zebedee in The Magic Roundabout. The less said about Cats the better. And now he’s taking a lead role in the new Steven Soderbergh film, The Christophers, opposite Michaela Coel.
But that’s only the half of it. Numerous stage Shakespeares are on his CV, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth in the 1970s, Coriolanus and Othello in the 80s, and Richard III and The Tempest in the 90s.
He returned to the stage in 2021 – aged 82 – to play Hamlet, and starred as Sir John Falstaff in Player Kings in 2024 – before withdrawing after falling from the stage during a performance (tripping on a chair during a fight scene).
He was knighted in 1991, and loves cricket. He’s a co-founder of LGBTQ+ rights organisation Stonewall, co-owns the Grapes pub, near Canary Wharf in London, where Gandalf’s staff is mounted above the bar, ready to grab in a time of crisis. He been ordained online by the Universal Life Church, which allowed him to officiate his mate Patrick Stewart’s wedding in 2013. And if you want to know the secret to his acting chops, he explains all in Ricky Gervais’s Extras: “How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I’m portraying in the film or play.”
Please get in your questions for the great man by 6pm on Monday 27 April and we’ll print his answers in our reader interview series.
• The Christophers is in UK and Irish cinemas from 15 May and opens in Australia on 4 June.
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